adies and gentlemen. She was
plainly and darkly dressed, but to my mind she looked like a princess
among them all. I could not but wonder what interest she could have in
such a rough set as we, although her husband, I confess, did judge us
hardly.

After the readings came the concert part of the performance, and then
what South chose to call the Moving Tableaux, which was really nothing
in the world but ballet-dancing. George and I were left to crown the
whole. I had some ordinary trapeze-work to do at first, but George
was reserved for the new feat, in order that his nerves might be
perfectly unshaken. When I went out alone and bowed to the audience, I
observed that Mrs. Lloyd was leaning eagerly forward, but at the first
glance at my face she sank back with a look of relief, and turned away,
that she might not see my exploits. It nettled me a little, I think, yet
they were worth watching.

Well, I finished, and then there was a song to give me time to cool. I
went to the side-scenes where I could be alone, for that five minutes. I
had no risk to run in the grand feat, you see, but I had George's life
in my hands. I haven't told you yet--have I?--what it was he proposed to
do.

A rope was suspended from the centre of the dome, the lower end of which
I held, standing in the highest gallery opposite the stage. Above the
stage hung the trapeze on which George and the two posture-girls were to
be. At a certain signal I was to let the rope go, and George, springing
from the trapeze across the full width of the dome, was to catch it in
mid-air, a hundred feet above the heads of the people. You understand?
The mistake of an instant of time on either his part or mine, and death
was almost certain. The plan we had thought surest was for South to give
the word, and then that both should count--One, Two, Three! At Three the
rope fell, and he leaped. We had practised so often that we thought we
counted as one man.

When the song was over the men hung the rope and the trapeze. Jenny and
Lou Slingsby swung themselves up to it, turned a few somersaults and
then were quiet. They were only meant to give effect to the scene in
their gauzy dresses and spangles. Then South came forward and told the
audience what we meant to do. It was a feat, he said, which had never
been produced before in any theatre, and in which failure was death. No
one but that most daring of all acrobats, Balacchi, would attempt it.
Now I knew South so well th